Head of the Islamic Movement in Israel Sheik Raed Sallah Reminisces about Highschool Swastika Drawing

Following are excerpts from an interview with Raed Sallah, head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, which aired on Al-Hiwar TV on May 5, 2009.

Interviewer: Who were your school teachers – Arabs or Jews? Who taught you these Hebrew curricula?

Raed Sallah: Almost all our teachers came from our own people. Many of them were from the city of Umm Al-Fahm itself, and the rest were from Palestinian villages and towns. In extremely rare cases, we had Jewish teachers. I recall that for several years at high school, we had a Jewish teacher. He taught us Hebrew. But this was very rare.

Interviewer: How would you characterize your relations with him?

Raed Sallah: We had that Jewish teacher in the tenth grade. This was in 1973, the year of the Ramadhan War. I remember that when the war broke out, a state of emergency was declared and education was suspended. A few days later, we returned to school. On the day this teacher was supposed to return after the war – what did some of the students do? They drew a big swastika on the blackboard. And we waited for the teacher to enter. The teacher entered as usual, without looking at the blackboard. He entered the classroom and sat down in front of us. So one of the students, who was a wiseguy, said to him: “What’s that symbol on the blackboard, Sir? I don’t understand it.” The teacher looked at the blackboard and got mad. He called the principal... There was an inquiry that day.